Sunday, July 05, 2009

UK Google Maps Mashup Round-up

UK Blood Donor MapThe National Blood Service in the UK is running a large media campaign to encourage people to donate blood. The campaign includes advertisements on national television that encourage viewers to use the website's Google Maps mashup to find the nearest place to give blood.

Users enter their address and the website produces a Google Map showing the nearest blood donor sessions in their vicinity. Markers show the location on the map and the map sidebar gives the distance from the user's address to the session venue. It is possible to sort the results by venue, date or distance.

Click on the column headings Venue, Next Date or Distance to sort by that column.

National Trust Places to VisitThe National Trust has produced a superb Google Maps mashup of places to visit and stay in the Peak District. The map includes an incredible number of points of interest, places to stay, facilities and things to do on your visit.

The map also features a very useful itinerary planner. Each point of interest on the map includes an 'add to my itinerary' link. When you have planned your destinations the map can even give you driving directions for all the places you wish to visit.

Each collection comes with its own Google Map. The waypoints are displayed on the map with red map markers which, when clicked, show a Bing map of the location inside the Google Maps information window.

The Guardian's Guide to UK HotelsThe travel section of The Guardian online is a prolific user of Google Maps. The team seem to have devised a template to quickly create maps from data in a Google Spreadsheet.

The latest map to have been created from the template is this collection of UK hotels, featuring two years' worth of reviews by travel journalist Sally Shalam.

Zubed JobsZubed Jobs is a Google Maps mashup designed to display job vacancies in the UK. To search for a job enter your address or postcode, a distance for the search radius and the type of job you are looking for.

The results are then displayed on a Google Map. Clicking on any of the map markers will open a window with the job details and a link to the company's website.

Subaru UK MapThe Subaru UK website features a Google Map to show dealerships and servicing centres. The map also features a handy parts finder. It is possible to search the map by location and to get directions from your home to your search results.

ScooparkThis Google Map will help you find motorbike parking in London. The map includes over 2,000 parking locations in the capital. The map can also tell you where your nearest petrol stations, dealers, services and police stations are located.

If that wasn't enough Scoopark is also available as a mobile phone application. Therefore you can find your nearest parking location even when you are out on the town!

Love CampingLove camping? Then you will love this Google Maps mashup. Love Camping is one of the most comprehensive guides to camp-sites in the UK. It is possible to search Love Camping's database of over 3,000 camp-sites via the site's Google Maps mashup.

Sussex Air Quality MapThe Sussex Air Quality Partnership promotes improvements in air quality related issues in Sussex. The site features a Google Map that is designed to give public access to air quality monitoring data gathered within Sussex and beyond.

The map uses numbered markers so users can get a very quick snapshot of the air quality in the county.

NotSpotThis Google Maps mashup shows areas of slow or no broadband coverage in the UK. The map displays 'not-spots' and 'slow-spots'. A "not-spot" is an area where you can't get broadband at all. A 'slow-spot' is an area where you can only get a broadband service with a speed of below 2 Mbps (downstream).

SoundAroundYouThe project ‘Sound Around You’, funded by the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), aims to research the sound environment of the UK. The project includes a soundscape map, using the Google Maps API, to display the ever expanding collection of soundscape recordings and responses.

As soon as a project participant uploads a new recording, it is marked on the map. By clicking on a marker you can open up a window displaying the participants individual responses to the soundscape as well as the recording itself.

A very special thanks to Mapperz, who has worked very hard over the last two weeks helping me put together this list of Google Maps mashups for the UK. If you are interested in maps you really should bookmark the Mapperz blog. Mapperz reports extensively on GIS and mapping news and about the best new online maps.________________